For me climbing has always been a vehicle to explore new places and spend time with people I love. I’ve explored ancient Italian towns and far flung Nepalese Gompa’s purely because climbing has taken me there.

When I started climbing I wasn’t a natural rock athlete and I wasn’t enamoured with hard trad. I have always been drawn to bigger mountains and I knew my strengths would lie in the cross section between fitness, strength and determination. Scottish winter and Alpine climbing have always suited my mind and body much more than technical rock routes.

I cut my teeth on Mount Kenya, at this time my knowledge of alpine climbing was non-existent. Back then, fast and loose was a better description of my style (perhaps it still is). After a few years in Kenya, I was craving additional structure and challenge so I moved back to Scotland. I wanted to climb in well developed areas where I could push my grade and not have the risk of getting killed by a buffalo on the way to the crag.

Scotland was everything I had hoped for, I got scared out of my mind on hard mixed routes and I started to love rock climbing again in the summer. Scottish winter was phenomenal but I still wanted to go bigger. Moving to Chamonix seemed the best way to achieve that, so in 2020 I did. I lived in a van and climbed all the time; I was hooked. I had a lot of early success on bigger routes. It turns out I was really good at suffering which automatically qualifies you as a semi-decent alpinist. I spent the next few years climbing increasingly wild routes on bigger mountains until I finally reached the big time; climbing in the Himalayas.

I like to do things in my own style, climbing doesn’t always need to be serious. It can be fun and ridiculous, you can wear daft outfits, you can party hard and still get things done. There’s a lot of amazing experiences in life, some of them are climbing, many are not.